Remember when Dollar Tree raised all their prices to $1.25 back in 2021? Those were not good times. Well, now that we're a few years past that, it appears that Dollar Tree is rethinking some of those price hikes, with plans to roll back prices to $1 for a select list of items.
But before you get too excited, I should tell you that it's only 300 - 400 items that'll go back to $1, which equals about 5% of their total inventory.
So which items are getting cheaper at Dollar Tree? (Hint: It's not the ice, the helium balloons, the 1.25-liter soda, or anything in the Dollar Tree Plus section.) Here's what to expect at your Dollar Tree and when (since this price rollback seems to be happening very, very slowly....).
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Is Dollar Tree rolling back prices?
Kinda. For now, it seems they're rolling back prices on a select list of items and only at select stores.
We first heard about the potential rollback last summer during Dollar Tree’s investor conference. Back then, the Dollar Tree CEO announced they were planning to lower prices on a few hundred items, putting them back at the original $1 price point.
"It’s pretty hard to have a banner like [Dollar Tree], and you have an item that everybody else has at $1, and you’re at a buck and a quarter."
Based on the CEO's comments, it appears the rollbacks are an attempt to make Dollar Tree's prices more competitive for certain items.
Which Dollar Tree items are going back to $1?
While Dollar Tree hasn't released an official list of the items that are going back to $1, shoppers have been pretty chatty online about which $1 rollbacks they're seeing pop up in their local stores.
For example, one TikTokker in Greenville, NC, shared a walkthrough of her store showing $1 price tags next to quite a few items.
Based on shoppers reports, here are the items that Dollar Tree is testing at the $1 price point (at select stores):
Bottled water (like Crystal Geyser water jugs and Pure Life 6-Packs)
Boxed candy (like Mike and Ikes, Swedish Fish, Dots, and SweetTarts)
Canned goods
Fruit cups
Powdered drink mixes
Spices and seasonings
When will the rollbacks happen?
After the CEO made his comments in summer 2023, we heard a lot of rumors that we’d start seeing the rollbacks happen later that summer.
But it wasn't until September 2023 that we began seeing some evidence of $1 price tags hitting stores. In true Dollar Tree fashion, the price changes seem to be rolling out a little haphazardly — and it's hard to predict which stores they're testing it in.
Update: On a visit to my Dollar Tree (in Central Florida) in February 2024, I found zero evidence of $1 rollbacks in any of the categories I listed above. Boxed candy was still $1.25, spices were still marked as $1.25, and so on.
Basically, there’s not going to be consistent pricing at Dollar Tree anymore.
While some items are getting rolled back to $1, Dollar Tree still plans to keep a number of different price points in each store.
In addition to the $3 and $5 Dollar Tree Plus items that are adding to the chaos, we're also seeing $1.50 helium balloons, $2 bags of ice, $1.50 reading glasses, and $1.75 1.25-liter Coke and Pepsi products as of February 2024.
So prepare yourself — the days of uniform pricing at Dollar Tree are long gone.
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